I use my 2120 primarily for diving, more on the "tech" side. After diving, pulling the anchor is an unavoidable task.
I've been using the "Ball and Ring" method and it works 93% of the time but still involves physical effort which isn't always good after a deep dive.
Installing a windlass seems like a no brainer. I'm not thrilled about rigging all the electrical stuff front to back... My BEP system is awesome though!
With the advent of lithium batteries, I was thinking of installing a drum style windlass on deck (simple, see it, and am used to them from my days in Bristol Bay) and putting a dedicated Lithium Ion Battery in the rode compartment. From my research it seems I could use a Norsk type battery that I could charge between trips. Only need it 2 times a trip. And I'd always have the ball and ring onboard for redundancy!
Thoughts?
I want to make sure I’m getting your intent correctly, do you mean placing a battery in the anchor locker and not storing the anchor line there, as in you’ll haul anchor / line on to the deck using a drum windlass and into a portable tote and the anchor locker will remain empty aside from a battery?
Or are you proposing having the battery in the anchor locker and then piling up wet anchor rode and chain on top of it
??
Option 1 just sounds like a bad idea, option two, (apologies in advance) sounds kinda insane to me (sorry
).
Either way will involve more work, pitfalls in both reliability and safety then would be involved running a power source for the windlass from where your batteries are already located using appropriate cable size and fusing.
I am very familiar with using a Parker in my case a 2520 for dive ops. For the 10+ seasons I owned my boat, all I did with it was tech dive on shipwrecks. I have a combo windlass with a gypsy wheel on one side and capstan drum on the other. The gypsy side of the windlass sends the anchor line & chain into the anchor locker. On the other side of the windlass is a capstan drum that can be used to winch op the rode & anchor. Drum is actually much more efficient then the gypsy wheel but someone must go forward to tail the line coming off the drum and the line piles up on deck.
I stored the anchor rode & chain in the anchor locker. However grappling shipwrecks, we were not always successful hooking the shipwrecks on the initial drop and frequently had to make multiple drops before successfully hooking the wreck. When making multiple drops, we’d use the capstan drum to recover the grapple & chain and pile the line on deck as we maneuvered the boat back over the wreck to attempt another drop. Using the drum was way quicker to retrieve and having the line already on deck and set to fall, allowed the grapple hook and chain to fall to the bottom faster and made the drop location more precise then having the friction of the line paying out of the locker and through the gypsy wheel slow the fall of the grapple to the sea floor even with the clutch on the gypsy wheel set in free fall.
After we were done diving for the day, I would use the gypsy wheel to haul the rode into the anchor locker.
I’m old, lazy and scared these days plus helium is way too expensive. I quit breathing the trimix about 6 years ago after 40 years of diving, 20+ of those years tech diving, I just fish now.
PS: If you know anyone in the Northeast who’s looking, I have a Poseiden 7.5 CFM compressor set to run on 220v single phase (no auto drains). Hyper filter stack that makes air that passes grade “E” with flying colors and a 5 bottle air bank ( 3 HP 4500s, all need hydro) that I’d sell for a pennies on the dollar compared to what this $hit would cost new…
